Arranger it's a puzzle Movement is the foundation of Arranger's puzzles, and it's hard to explain without showing you (if you can watch the trailer, that'll help). The world of Arranger is divided into a grid, and you don't move the main character, the rebellious, misfit girl Jemma, around the squares. Instead, imagine that the row or column Jemma is in becomes a conveyor, and you control its direction and speed. Jemma stays still, and you move the floor and everything on it left, right, up, or down, just like you would a normal person. How to say goodbye But with more squares. It's one of those things that makes sense when you do it, believe me.
Jemma lives in a small town inside The Hold, a barrier of sorts that protects the inhabitants from static, a sort of force that looks like a purple and rainbow oil slick that keeps people and things in place. However, Jemma, being an adventurous person, wants to leave town and see what else is out there. This is the first part of your adventure, as the first few puzzles teach you how to navigate the Arranger’s moving grid. A thug blocks your way? Turns out the grid rolls up, so you can go through one end and appear on the other side. Need to move a crate of trash somewhere? Find out how to pull and push it along with Jemma, or move it without moving. he.
Ultimately, it’s a simple concept for a puzzle game, as most of the puzzles boil down to “getting from one side of the screen to the other,” but simple doesn’t mean bad, and it’s surprising how much variety Furniture & Mattress is able to introduce over the course of the game’s 8 hours. There are a ton of differently themed areas in the game (a beach town of sorts, a tech dungeon, a rocky, orange desert covered in cacti), and I’d advise paying attention to the artwork that covers the background of scenes and serves as comic-style cutscenes when something happens. It’s a really effective way to add character and detail to a zoomed-in 2D game.
But of course, the puzzles have variety, too. Static-affected rocks block your path, while other items must be moved around them, carefully tetrised into a configuration that leaves Jemma enough squares to get through. Rubbery, screaming-faced static monsters appear and clog the grid, and you must push or shove them with swords to clear a path. Early on, a man asks you to shear his sheep in a sort of time trial – and boy, are they not really sheep? There are puzzles to solve while connected to another character, and one where you have to sneak a little girl out of her house while blocking her parents’ view with their own furniture. The slightly disappointing parts are a few boss fights, which involve moving multiple things into position while the octopus/worm/blob monster waits patiently, until you manage to poke it in its big eye.
Overall, Arranger never gets old. Even though the puzzles all have the same basic concept, they get considerably more difficult, and some of them will shock you so much that it's like walking into a brick wall. I had a hard time solving some of the end-game puzzles, in which Jemma must move pieces of machinery to remake the level's layout, but I loved moving obstacles around laser traps in a creepy lab.
But there's no need to worry, because there are optional settings that let you skip almost any puzzle in the game (not including optional puzzles like finding a necklace in a mine, which, to be honest, was such a pain I never managed to solve). It's a kind touch that I appreciate, as a puzzle fanatic who's always trying to get other people to try out games in a genre that can be hostile.
I have a feeling the humour in the writing will also win Arranger some fans. The weird sheep are one of many examples where a laugh took me by surprise. An inventor explains that she’s created a robot that can’t feel love, which Jemma says is very cool; the Robot himself waits a moment to make a sad face. There’s a running joke, in a section set in an underground commune with lots of ancient traditions, that really cracked me up and so I won’t even come close to revealing it. It’s well done, to the point where the ongoing tone is contrasted by some strange noises of the sort that really make you think. A village has stopped talking because they use a fleet of mechanical birds to send short messages to each other. thatElon. Another example of this is, sadly, the final moral of the entire game. It's satisfyingly consistent with the theme, but a bit too predictable, especially when you compare it to things like non-sheep.
Anyway, I'm being a bit of a curmudgeon about this. Overall, Arranger is an imaginative, light-hearted, fun game that doesn't spread itself too thin. I think it'll be a great challenge for puzzle enthusiasts, but it's kind enough to throw at someone who's just starting out. In particular, I haven't been able to solve the optional mine puzzles yet. But that just makes me want to try it again.
This review is based on a review version of the game provided by the developer.
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